This 10-chapter monograph explores the range of influences parents have on their children's linguistic development and in the process attempts to understand why parents adopt the language styles they do in addressing children. The discussion focuses on the following three themes that are interwoven throughout the book: (1) the social nature of human language that drives parents to adopt a particular style of language with their children; (2) the importance of multiple variables in determining the precise effect a specific parent may have on the language of a particular child; and (3) the difference between direct and indirect effects on the learning process. Chapters 1 and 2 discuss variables that help shape linguistic interaction between parent and child. Chapter 3 examines the character and functioning of baby talk, and the next four chapters focus on how adults influence their children's development of conversational skills, phonology, lexicon, and grammar. Chapter 8 turns to parental roles in the development of literacy and the place of television in language learning. Language problems (real and imagined) are the subject of chapter 9, and chapter 10 offers concluding remarks. (VWL)